Three people are likely to complete the top tier of President Obama's health team. Rumors have been circulating for several weeks, and with it all but confirmed officially the media is reporting Dr. Margaret Hamburg will receive the nod for commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency that has been plagued with problems. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein is likely to be named as deputy commissioner. Both have experience as health commissioners in large cities (Hamburg formerly in New York City; Sharfstein currently in Baltimore), each has political ties to Washington, and each is genuinely respected in the public health community.

In addition to their respective professional achievements, readers of MIWatch will be interested to know that each comes from a family of distinguished psychiatrists. In Dr. Hamburg's case, her mother, Dr. Beatrix Hamburg, is a child psychiatrist who headed the W.T. Grant Foundation. Her father, Dr. David Hamburg, chaired the psychiatry department at Stanford University (1961-1972), and was president of the Institute of Medicine (1975-1980) and the Carnegie Corporation (1982-1997). Dr. Stephen Sharfstein, CEO of Shephard Pratt, is a past-president of the American Psychiatric Association whose career includes work on mental health reforms of the Carter administration.

The third person to complete the team is a R. Gil Kerlikowske, chosen for the White House drug czar who sees prevention and treatment as part of the job's respsonsbilities. Activists have expressed "wait and see" because he comes to the job from law enforcement as police chief in Seattle.